This looks incredibly interesting. But with the whole "Terraria in SPEHS" comparison, I hope it doesn't turn out like a one-shot item hunt as well. I really hope for some replayability, but other than that it looks great.

I just wanna know if I can fly the dropships at will and crash them or if they land on their own, if I can build how I please on any of the planets, and, if you can build, would the weather affect the materials that I build with, like building with, say, bricks on a planet that rains acid.

That does look great.
I'm still wary though, a mixture of genre-fatigue and past over-hyping (Terraria was not bad, but the hype was through the roof) keeps me from being excited for 2D indie construction/exploration games nowadays.

You'll be able to build dropships and drop pods. Whilst you wont control them in space as such, they will land on the planet and have unique properties. Dropships are used by teams who want to arrive on a planet together. Pods are for players arriving alone :)

Hey!

we need more developers like you
also, will those tentacles in the background of that one picture be related to any sort of boss/enemy? Or are they just for show?

Currently, we do have someone working on the music and they're doing an absolutely wonderful job.

I personally feel that the music of a game absolutely the most important aspect! If you don't have good music then it's impossible to immerse yourself in it. I doubt that Mario would have been nearly as big a hit if its tunes weren't as catchy. Good music can make a game, while bad music can ruin it. It's not going to be a center piece in our game (like it is in Bastion, Oh My GOD do I love the music in that game) but it's going to support the game play and ambiance and it's going to be catchy.

Tunes will be by biome type. We're also looking into doing procedural generation of the music from prewritten hooks, automatic mixing as it were, but that's still more of hopes than actual implementation at this stage. It's paramount that if we do that that it SOUNDS GOOD. And if we can't make it sound unique and catchy doing that then we'll scrap it. One of the fears is that maybe doing it this way will make everything sound similar (because it will need to be in similar keys and tempo) or it will need to be stretched around which might distort it. Music right now is very much a work in progress, so there's not much to say other than it's incredibly important and I will make sure as good a job is done on it as possible.

As far as feedback on your music is concerned. This is all just my personal opinion (I'm a programmer, but I've taken a few course in Music Theory and I've played an instrument for several years).

I'm going to be critical, but know that I think that these tunes are good. And I'm only being critical in a constructive manner. This is not intended to insult, but to help.

I understand if it's personal or whatever but I'd love to see what he thought of it

The dissonance in the first track feel unintentional the first time it happens (only a second or so into the song!) and it creates tension that isn't ever really resolved or exploited for emotional impact (it just kind of dissipates). I really like the ambiance though! Another issue is that when the flute comes in at around 1:40 it feels really out of place. Too happy. The rest of the piece is very somber. It destroys the mood. It's like going to a funeral and everything's really quiet and tense, then all of the sudden a clown comes out of nowhere and smacks you in the face with a pie and blows a horn. The first melody really suited the mood though.

The second one feels very jaunty, like a town theme or something. The melody feels a bit more generic than the last song. But that just might be me! The processed voice samples sounded a bit strange, and I don't think the hollow sounding drum fit terribly well. I would suggest trying different percussion and maybe changing the melody around to be more musically interesting. The instrument you used will make pretty much anything sound fun.

For the third song, I think it had a rather catchy melody. But the melody sounds a bit forced around 1:20 and similar parts (123 1 2 123 1 2 123 1 2 etc) I think it could use a bit of rework.. I'm not too keen on the breaks with the clapping. The slow down bit in the middle was completely unexpected. Generally, unexpected is bad in music. (It sounded like you were running out of ideas I liked the bassline, but I think you could have gone with a more interesting chord progression. And the bassline was completely overshadowed by the melody, maybe moving away from a sine bass into something with a bit more punch would help?

All in all, I think all of your songs had some great potential. I'm a sucker for somber songs, so I enjoyed the first one the best. Don't be afraid to use minor keys, even on happy songs. (I'm a sucker for minor keys *swoon*.) And I would caution against moving too far away from synths at the present. The reason being is that it forces you to be more creative with your melodies to make up for the bad instrumentation.

One thing that's bothering me, the logo seems way off compared to the rest of the game's pixel art aesthetic. Anyone else with me? Seeing the swooshy and sleek STARBOUND logo almost evokes images of a business, not a light-hearted adventure.